


Where The Air Is Sweet

by crowsnest



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowsnest/pseuds/crowsnest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Megamind gets some harsh lessons in reality care of PBS; Uncle Rory relates the day that things changed for everybody in the Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The Air Is Sweet

After the kid fronted a break out, they realized they had to do something to keep him entertained. They couldn't just dump the kid – they knew how it worked. If they let him go now, who knows where he'd end up – who he'd end up with. They didn't know if he was going to develop super-powers as he got older. Made them piss themselves at night, I bet. Let the kid go, next thing they knew they'd have a crisis. It'd be CraterMan in Los Angeles all over again. Or maybe it'd be like that freak the Giggler. Or shit, cutting women up like Crazy Eight the Spider. 

Nobody wanted to get their hands dirty, though. He was a sweet-faced baby, and that pulled heart strings. So they set up the Good Boy room.

It started as a system of rewards – both for the inmates who watched him and for the kid himself. He responded to the carrot better than the stick, so they tried that out for a while. Afternoon TV, piped in from PBS. Nothing but kiddie shit. Educational faire. Puppets and singing and neighborhoods that were magical talking about love and compassion and being friends like any of that shit meant anything.

The inmate that sat with him would get more privileges. You signed up, you took a shift, and that was your chore. Beat getting shanked in the laundry, that was damn sure. Great way to avoid the yard if you'd pissed someone with friends off. Better than going into Protective Custody. There was no coming out of PC.

That's what I was avoiding; going into PC meant you were worth something to somebody who was a citizen, who was the law. I didn't want that albatross around my fucking neck. I wanted to get out of this pit alive. Sure, it wasn't a Max facility with all the crazies, but there was no denying that prisons took men and turned them into animals. Me? I was a mouse. I didn't make noise. I kept my head down. I hid.

So I signed up for the kid, like clockwork, every day. He wasn't so hard to handle. I had a boy of my own, even if I'd lost my rights to him. This was as close to playing house as I'd get again, if my ex-wife had her way. She had a nice man on the hill now. Got away from the life. Got away from it all. Made something of herself. Hope she was giving my boy what he needed.

My boy would be ten; Little Blue would be about half his age, by our reckoning. Nobody knew for sure. He sure as hell didn't act like no toddler I'd ever seen before. He didn't talk much, he didn't make much noise. Just watched everything with those big round eyes of his and absorbed it like a little sponge. He was way too smart. Even for us; sure, this is a 'gifted criminal' facility – ear-marked for super villain cronies, prize henchmen, and accomplices – but we proved just how stupid we could be, thinking we could handle an alien toddler with a head like a bowling ball.

So I sat in the Good Boy room and watched him watch TV; couple of hours, then lunch. Someone else would get a shot if they signed up; if not, I'd go back. It wasn't so bad – from eight am to four pm there was something on the TV for him, and in the evening he wanted to see NOVA or some other weird stuff like that. If it taught him something, he wanted to watch. Sitting there with that funny little fishbowl in his lap. 

He didn't always speak to his watchers – those days were easiest – when he just plugged in and tuned us out. No questions to answer, no lies to make up. Today, however, was not one of those days. He fixed me with a look not long after I arrived with him, sat down on the uncomfortable folding chair where my ass would go numb for the next two hours, and asked the words that would end everything good for him, forever.

“You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Uncle Rory?” 

This was not a good start. 

“No,” I told him. “Of course I wouldn't.” That right there was a whopper. He watched me tell it, judging it in that big head of his, before he decided he was safe enough to go forward with his next question.

“They're not real at all, are they?” 

Shit. How do you answer that? Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, all that shit – it's a pain in the ass. All the little lies we tell kids to prep 'em for the big ones about truth and justice and all that other warmfuzzy bullshit. 

“No,” I finally said. “No they ain't. They're just puppets.” 

“Not like me,” he clarified, trying to figure out his own reality now. “Not like Minion.”

“Nope. You're the real deal, kid.” Flesh and blood and bone, and all the more screwed for it.

He sat there, hands wide on Minion's bowl; the little fish rolled his too-human eyes up at the kid, and then watched me. Sorry, little fish. Little Blue said nothing, but instead hugged the fish tighter to his chest, and seemed to forget the TV entirely.

This wasn't good. This system had worked for months. All we needed was for him to get too smart for it, and it would be the end of the road of our safe haven. 

“That's why I'm not there, isn't it?” he asked, though he did not look up at the TV anymore. “You haven't taken me to where I fit in. Because it's not real. There isn't any place like that, where the air is sweet and everybody is neighbors and likes each other. Where there are other people like me.”

Christ, I wanted to swear. Of course. All those cartoons and puppet shows, they had people of all shapes and sizes. Of course; he saw himself in the Count and Grover and Oscar. He'd been trying to figure out if there was a place he was meant to be, a place he belonged – outside a prison.

I got up off the chair, came a little closer. He didn't move, but Minion roiled in his little bowl, and bared his teeth. Didn't matter; fish was gutsy, but there was no way he was going to get out of his bowl anytime soon. I sat down on the floor, folding my legs up Indian style, the way the kid sat. 

“There ain't anybody like you, Blue.” Putting 'little' before that seemed patronizing and right now, the kid was asking for truth. Could at least be a man, be a father for ten fucking minutes and give him that much. God knows he wasn't gonna get much else around here. “You're one of a kind. Unique. Yeah. All those things are puppets or toys, and you're not like them. You're real.” 

He fixed me with that damn look of his, too smart for that chubby-cheeked face. Pinned me with his gaze like he was some sort of superman already. He was way too young to be resigned to the truth so soon, to have hope die in those eyes like that.

“Okay,” was all he said at first. Than he followed it up, belatedly, with a “Thank you” that sounded less than heartfelt. I didn't hold it against him. Nobody thanks anybody and means it for a sucker punch, even an honest one. 

“I don't want to watch anymore TV,” he said, his eyes finally leaving mine. I nodded, got up and killed the channel. He didn't say anything after that; it was just uncomfortable silence for the rest of our two hour block. 

When he came out all down in the dumps, the Warden stopped me. Last thing I needed was this, but it wasn't the kid's fault. He started to drill me – trying to find out if I'd done anything to him, even though the place was riddled with cameras. 

I told him the truth: kid just wanted to know where the air was sweet; it's sure as hell not anywhere in Michigan.


End file.
